Chapter 162 Outliers in the Swimming Pool

HUFF... PUFF...

"Thank goodness! The weight training wasn’t a waste!"

Chen Jue felt much better seeing the 3 small points that popped up on his panel.

Actually, adding weights to his body was an idea Chen Jue had come up with on a whim.

The professional training plan Li Rui had designed for him didn’t actually include any of this.

The idea of adding weights came from an anime he’d watched as a kid. He remembered seeing characters who practiced Body Techniques and Turtle Style Qi Gong slowly add more and more weight to their bodies. After they took the weights off, they’d become completely overpowered and show off. A sudden surge of adolescent fantasy made him decide to up the ante for himself.

After all, he was a guy with a panel now. It would be a disservice to all the other overpowered protagonists out there if he didn’t do something intense.

He never expected upping the ante would have such explosive results!

Just a slow jog for a warm-up had netted him 3 small attribute points. The efficiency was almost on par with a [Break the Limit] workout session.

However, after finishing the 2.5-kilometer weighted run, Chen Jue felt a deep fatigue. The soreness in his legs was almost as bad as if he’d jogged twenty laps around a track.

’I should’ve taken my pre-workout before I started,’ Chen Jue thought, slightly annoyed. He entered the indoor swimming center, found a massage chair, paid 10 yuan for a session, and took some of the supplements he’d brought with him.

Once the pre-workout’s Temporary Attributes started to kick in, Chen Jue allocated all 3 of his accumulated Free Attribute points into [Constitution]. Only then did the soreness from the weighted jog begin to subside.

His stamina started to return, and his stiff muscles grew supple and strong once more.

He went to the front desk to ask about the swimming fees. Jiang University students and faculty could get in for half price with their IDs, but outsiders had to pay full price.

Although Chen Jue was auditing classes, he didn’t qualify for the full-time student discount. He had no choice but to obediently fork over 4,000 yuan for a yearly swimming pass.

According to the training schedule Li Rui had laid out, Chen Jue needed to go swimming about once every three days, so a yearly pass was more cost-effective.

Back when he was earning around ten thousand a month, there was barely anything left after food, drinks, and rent. The financial pressure was immense, so he could never bring himself to splurge on all sorts of annual memberships.

It was only now that his "Brother of Special Skills" ID had blown up, earning him tens of thousands per video, that he dared to spend so lavishly.

But the most important thing was that he no longer had a nine-to-five job to clock in for. He had plenty of free time to manage, which meant he could make the most of these annual memberships.

If he were still working, he’d probably buy a pass, use it once or twice, and then let it collect dust in his bag. Gyms and swimming pools loved suckers like him.

...

After getting his pass, he entered the locker room. Since it was December and winter had set in, the heating was on full blast.

Chen Jue had assumed not many people would come swimming in this weather, but the moment he entered the locker room, he saw quite a few students and non-university people.

’As expected of Hang City. So many people with money and time to spare.’

’Don’t people have to work on a Monday afternoon?’ Chen Jue muttered to himself as he found a locker with a keypad and started to undress.

He was wearing a winter tracksuit, which was just a single jacket. When he took it off, the black weighted vest underneath was revealed.

This sight instantly drew the eyes of several other men changing in the locker room.

What kind of normal person wears stuff like that?

But Chen Jue wasn’t just wearing a weighted vest; he also had similar weighted straps on his wrists and calves. As he took them off and tossed them into his locker, they landed with a loud "THUD," "THUD," shaking the entire row of lockers. The commotion was big enough to leave the other men completely dumbfounded.

"Holy shit!"

"Who wears weights these days?"

"What kind of beast is he!" the men muttered among themselves.

But when Chen Jue pulled off his tight-fitting, elastic short-sleeved shirt, revealing a chiseled, muscular upper body, the men instantly stopped whispering.

It couldn’t be helped!

He was too shredded!

An eight-pack, V-cut abs, an Adonis belt, a devil’s back... it was a physique that would make any man drool with envy.

Thanks to his recent period of high-intensity training, Chen Jue had lowered his body fat percentage and sculpted the most natural-looking muscle definition. The muscles of his upper body were sharply defined. The inverted triangle formed by his waist, abs, chest, back, and shoulders was as perfect as a Renaissance sculpture.

Moreover, having shed his weights, Chen Jue felt light as a feather. His muscles were in their most relaxed and elastic state.

With the pre-workout supplements kicking in, his body entered a pumped state. Each muscle swelled as if inflated, full and powerful, bulging abnormally. The slightest flex revealed clear muscle striations.

In terms of physique and proportion, while he wasn’t as ridiculously wide as a bodybuilder on steroids, he was absolutely top-tier among natural athletes.

An ordinary person would have to spend years in a gym to build a physique like Chen Jue’s.

After changing into his swim trunks, Chen Jue checked himself out in the large locker room mirror and broke into a satisfied smile.

He hadn’t even realized his physique had improved to this extent. He looked like a character straight out of a comic book.

During his daily training, he hadn’t been paying attention to the changes in his body, only that his body fat was decreasing and his muscles were growing.

The bathroom in his apartment only had a small mirror for his face. This was the first time he’d seen his entire body in a full-length mirror like the one at the pool.

’This is a little crazy!’

’Working out really does improve your whole vibe and appearance,’ Chen Jue thought, preening in front of the full-length mirror. He reached up and touched his hair, which was starting to grow out.

His only weak points now were his leg muscles, which were still a bit lacking, and his overall muscle mass wasn’t quite sufficient yet. He needed to keep consuming high-quality protein to bulk up.

...

Under the envious gazes of all the men, young and old, Chen Jue put on his swim cap and goggles, rinsed off in the shower area to acclimate to the water temperature, and then strolled out of the locker room.

The indoor swimming center was huge, with several different types of pools. The public swimming area alone had two short-course pools: a 1.25-meter-deep shallow pool for minors and a 1.8-meter-deep, 8-lane pool for adults.

In addition, there was a 5-meter-deep diving pool, a 3-meter-deep artistic swimming pool, and a 2-meter-deep competition pool reserved for speed swimming.

Chen Jue walked a lap around the facility and noticed many members of the Jiang University swim team training in the competition pool, so he decided to take a dip in the public adult pool first.

He had grown up in the countryside of Wen City, spending his summers in ponds and reservoirs. He had also swum in the ocean. Through countless instances of choking on water, he had taught himself a crude swimming technique. He was decent in the water—at the very least, he wouldn’t drown if you threw him in.

He got into the pool and held onto the lane line, doing a few bobs to hold his breath and go under, letting the water wash over his head. Once he was used to the pressure and buoyancy, Chen Jue started to swim slowly along the lane.

He had only swum a few meters when a notification popped up on his panel:

——————

[Ding~]

[A qualifying limb movement has been completed.]

[Skill Activated: Swimming]

——————

’Just as I thought. Like [Archery], it’s a survival-oriented activity, so the panel can register it,’ Chen Jue thought happily as he looked at the notification.

With a [Skill] now active, he could intuitively track his technical improvement.

Chen Jue’s self-taught stroke was similar to freestyle: alternating arm strokes, a flutter kick with his legs, and his body suspended in a straight line in the water.

However, since he had never learned proper breathing techniques and relied solely on his self-taught feel for the water, he would swim a long stretch until he couldn’t hold his breath anymore. Then he would either switch to a doggy paddle to lift his head and breathe, flip over onto his back to catch his breath with a backstroke, or, at worst, tread water to pop his head up and gasp for air.

But these breathing methods were very abrupt and broke his swimming rhythm. So, after swimming two laps of the short-course pool and gaining a dozen or so [Swimming] Skill Level points, Chen Jue stopped.

’I really need to find a professional to teach me,’ Chen Jue thought. He stood at the end of the pool and scanned the lanes for good swimmers.

He noticed that the patrons who had learned proper technique all started with the breaststroke.

The breaststroke has a very distinct upward motion for breathing, making it much easier for beginners to learn and master compared to the side-breathing of freestyle.

But Chen Jue didn’t like the breaststroke; he preferred his own self-taught style. After observing for a bit to familiarize himself with the lane, he took a deep breath, kicked explosively off the wall, and used the reactive force to shoot forward. Mimicking a professional athlete’s streamlined posture, he darted underwater like a fish for a good ten meters.

Just as his initial momentum was about to fade, Chen Jue began to rapidly alternate his arms in powerful strokes. His legs thrashed, kicking up a storm of whitewater behind him as his stiff body continued to charge forward.

Ten meters, five, two... Finally, his hand touched the finish line. Only then did Chen Jue throw his head back, forcefully expelling the stale air from his mouth and lungs before taking a fresh breath.

’I actually made it to the end in one breath?’

’A 25-meter short course isn’t that far, I guess!’ Chen Jue thought, looking back at the lane he’d just swum. He noticed several people practicing breaststroke in the adjacent lanes were staring at him.

His underwater sprint to the end must have seemed abrupt, drawing strange looks from the others.

But to Chen Jue’s surprise, after he completed that 25-meter underwater swim, a new notification popped up on his panel:

——————

[Ding~]

[You have completed a high-intensity underwater swimming exercise. Your swimming technique has greatly increased. Your cardiopulmonary function has been slightly enhanced.]

[Swimming Skill Level +50]

[Constitution Attribute +0.01]